From the London Times, Saturday 23 June 2012.
Ben Whishaw, Jeremy Irons and Tom Hiddleston are bringing the history plays to the BBC. Andrew Billen talks to them.
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown â uneasy even, one imagines, if it is worn merely for Harry, England and the BBC. Any actor playing the king in Shakespeareâs second tetralogy of English history, the Henriad, composed of Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV, and Henry V, must feel the crownâs weight. It has rounded the mortal temples of Alec Guinness, Paul Scofield, Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance (among the Richards), of John Gielgud, Jon Finch and Tom Fleming (the last of whose Henry IVs became the voice of royal ceremonial for the BBC), and, most burdensomely, of an army of hyper-distinguished Hals led by Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton and the just-knighted Kenneth Branagh.
But for Ben Whishaw, Jeremy Irons and Tom Hiddleston, who sequentially play the kings in the BBCâs new cycle, The Hollow Crown, there is another responsibility. Shakespeare on TV has fallen out of fashion. The once familiar BBC Shakespeare production â there were more than 60 between 1945 and 2000 â has disappeared to be replaced by the occasional BBC film of a hit stage version. Even with Ian Holm as Lear, David Tennant as Hamlet, and, tomorrow on BBC Four, Jeffrey Kissoon as the RSCâs current Julius Caesar, this is not quite the same. The BBCâs last Richard IIs, for instance, were Fiona Shaw (from the gender-swapping 1995 National Theatre production) and Mark Rylance, filmed at the Globe in 2003. Incredibly, there has not been a BBC Henry V for 32 St Crispin Days. That play begins by apologising for cramming âso great an objectâ within the âwooden Oâ of the stage. Today, the question is whether Shakespeare, with his worrisome language, lengthy scenes and habit of arriving DOA in classrooms, is interesting enough to fill our great plasmatic rectangles.
Well. I have seen all four films in the BBCâs The Hollow Crown series, and my living room echoes resoundingly âyesâ. When the BBC announced the project in September 2010, the histories seemed an odd place to begin a Bard revival. Now, in the summer of the Jubilee, as the kingdom again ponders a succession, they seem oddly relevant, if not as controversial as when Richard IIâs abdication scene was removed from print editions so as not to offend the first Elizabeth. Politicians now, as Shakespeareâs monarchs then, strain for legitimacy amid shifting alliances. Nor is there anything remote about sending young men abroad to die for opaque causes: as the grunt Williams tells Henry V just before Agincourt, when he dares to speak of the justice of his cause: âThatâs more than we know.â
Taking advantage of the nationâs widescreens, the executive producers Sam Mendes and Pippa Harris have opened the dramas out, cinematically, into Britainâs countryside, castles and cathedrals. The playsâ respective directors, Rupert Goold, Richard Eyre and Thea Sharrock, have encouraged their casts to deliver often heavily-cut speeches conversationally. Soliloquies, following the convention of Olivierâs 1948 Hamlet, are delivered as voiceovers. But what casts! Not even counting those kings, to whose number one must admit the dourly brilliant Rory Kinnear as Richardâs successful challenger Bolingbroke, there is the fat-suited Simon Russell Beale as a delicate, scheming Falstaff, Joe Armstrong as Hotspur, and, down in Falstaffâs unruly alternative court in Eastcheap, Julie Walters as Mistress Quickly. Again and again, actors we have taken for granted prove true Shakespeareans.
But it is when the kings wrangle over the crown that the films electrify. Ben Whishaw as Richard, reluctantly persuaded to abdicate in Bolingbrokeâs favour (âHere cousin!â), bursts into tears, almost hands over the crown, takes it back and finally rolls it truculently towards Kinnear, who is wearing an expression that might be texted as âWTF?â.
âWhen someone is that deluded about themselves, it is always slightly comic,â says Whishaw, last seen in The Hour on BBC Two, and, at 31, two years younger than Richard at his deposition and death. âI felt his story was the story of someone who was forced to confront their vulnerability, who has constructed an identity of power and invulnerability and godlike authority, and whose illusions about himself are shattered.â
Whishaw dresses for his sacking in a priestly white gown trimmed in orange. In an earlier beach scene, in which he makes a stage of a rock, he wears his crown over a scarf worn a la Lawrence of Arabia. Mixed in with his divinity is a dessert helping of camp. âWhat Rupert [Goold] and I talked about was a Michael Jackson parallel. That was our reference in terms of his theatricality, the sense that everything is a performance and everything is about maximising the mystery around him. And like Jackson he is surrounded by people who just say yes to him.â
But there are more mundane parallels for an age of economic uncertainty. Whishaw sees Richard both as a megastar and a bloke who loses the job that defined him. Yet, once reduced to nothing, in his cell, his imagination spring opens and he identifies with others, even his old horse. âWhen I had finished working on this play â and maybe all Shakespeare is like this â I had the sensation that the play seemed to be about everything in life,â Whishaw says. âIt is at once very specific and completely universal.â
For Jeremy Irons, who takes over from Kinnear as Henry IV in the two plays that follow Richard II, the story burrows towards the particular and the personal. Henry, so assured when he was Henry Bolingbroke, a duke unjustly exiled by the whimsically despotic Richard, is now plagued by ill health brought on by guilt at having usurped a divinely anointed king. The barons, not liking their new monarch much more than the last, again divide the kingdom. Any actor playing this Henry finds the playsâ form following their content. He is the star in title only. In performance he vies for attention with his tearaway son-and-heir Hal, his rebellious rival Hotspur, and, above all, Falstaff, who not only represents that hedonistic boozer faction in the English character but is a dissolute second father to his son. For many theatre-goers over the centuries, and for Orson Welles in his movie Chimes at Midnight, the star ofHenry IV is Sir John Falstaff.
Ironsâ solution to the playsâ divided attentions is to make Henryâs throne its own centre of gravity, turning it into a virtual sick bed. Irons, 63, six years older than Henry at his death, wears the hollow crown over a hollow face, in a performance informed by his research into the real Henry, a âdazzling youthâ, champion jouster, unjustly exiled and rightly outraged when Richard takes the estate of his dead father (Patrick Stewartâs John of Gaunt). âYou would think he would be perfect, but in fact illness got him,â Irons says. âHe used to have these fits. He would lie there apparently dead for ten, 20 minutes and then he would revive. No one quite knows what it was.â But it adds to the scene when Hal believes his father dead.
In a 1979 Henry IV, the BBC gave Jon Finchâs king leprosy, allowing for some Pilate-style hand-washing undermined by an off day in the continuity department that resulted in the king both wearing and not wearing gloves at the time. This time Richard Eyre determined leprosy would only mean Irons getting up even earlier into make-up. Instead Irons complicates his malaise with a fatherâs despair.
âFor me it is a domestic play and a play about a father and a son â quite common themes: I am missing a boy who is not there and is up to I-know-not-what. I think quite a lot of fathers go through that time with their sons when they are demanding their independence. I certainly had it with my first boy. He pulled away and some years later he came back and realised how similar he was to me.â
Sam Irons is a photographer, but Max Irons is already, at 26, a Hollywood leading man (Red Riding Hood). He has talked openly of being expelled from Bryanston when a master caught him having sex. âNow Max is trying to steal my crown,â his father jokes. âBut you also think of our current Prince of Wales. He is not up to making a fool of himself, but he has no function and he is trying to find his place. Of course, like Hal, as soon as he gets the job, I am sure he will be magnificent.â
Richard Eyre rang Tom Hiddleston to say he had won the part of Hal/Henry V on the wedding day of Prince Charlesâs elder son two Aprils ago. Tom said yes. Now 31, barely two years older than Henry at Agincourt, he had been alerted to the âmuscular, visceralâ Shakespeare as a schoolboy when he saw Branaghâs 1989 film ofHenry V. Over a term at Rada, he paperbacked his way through Shakespeare at a CafĂ© Nero near Archway, London. âI distinctly remember the weekends I read the histories. When I got to Henry IV and Henry V, I thought to myself, very privately: âWhat a prospect that character is! What a journey he goes on!â â
No prep, however, could forearm him for his first day of filming, which, owing to the professional commitment of Beale, was onHenry V (15 weeks later Hiddlestonâs reverse journey would end in the studio that mocked up Eastcheap in Henry IV). âIt was an extraordinary thing. Day one, take one, slate one was riding along the moat of Arundel Castle and then delivering, âOnce more unto the breach.â â
Branagh renders the Harfleur battle speech from a white horse, crisply and at speed, revving up the ârâ in âtigerâ. Olivier before him, riding an equally pristine steed, waits for perfect quiet and speaks unlisping Churchill. But Hiddleston dismounts and kneels amid a group of soldiers, fixing them in turn. Breathlessly, almost desperately, he gives his pep talk as if the English are one-nil at half time and he is going on himself. The playing owes much to the realism of HBOâs Band of Brothers (which, of course, owes much to Shakespeare).
âThe play is an examination of war through the eyes of this one man,â Hiddleston says. âThere are brutal speeches in there that are not pretty. I must be careful. Thea Sharrock has not made an anti-war film but it is certainly a pro-peace film. When Henry tells Williams âevery subjectâs duty is the kingâs, but every subjectâs soul is his ownâ it is an exhortation to accountability. Take responsibility for who you are and what you stand for.â
Hiddleston, who has played in several father-son struggles (Randolph Churchill to Albert Finneyâs Winston in The Gathering Storm, Loki to Anthony Hopkinsâs Odin in Thor last year) clashed lightly with his scientist father about whether to go into acting. One of the funniest moments of his Henry is when he delivers a perfect Irons impression down at the Boarâs Head. But the Henriad has got to him deeper than that, either that or 4am starts, pre-dawn runs and filming till dusk did.
âI donât want to sound too pompous or pretentious but people I have spoken to who have played Hamlet and other huge, totemic parts say they change you permanently. And having played Henry V, I tend to agree. Part, I think, of the appeal and strength of Henry V as a character is his astonishing ability to back up words with action. I truly think I understand the nature of responsibility a little more.â
The responsibility of returning Shakespeare to television was not the three kingsâ alone, but Whishaw, Irons and Hiddleston have more than delivered. As Whishaw says, we are told, and sometimes think, that Shakespeare doesnât work on television: âHis poetry needs a space to live in. It is metaphorical. Blah, blah, blah.â The Hollow Crown refutes such pessimism. Shakespeare is as intimate as television and as outsized as its widest screen. Our wooden O is the box in the corner of our little rooms, confining mighty men, and liberating them too.
The Hollow Crown begins with Richard II on BBC Two, June 30 at 9pm
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